Lovers and Husbands
by Anatomy Melancholia
Summary: An indirect continuation of 'Armistice.' It feels like a renaissance - Mick and Lila move on together. But in the aftermath of a new start, the ghosts of the last two years can't be ignored.


AN: This is the indirect second part to the story beginning with 'Armistice.'

-x-

It wasn't planned. Dinner was planned. Fixing the cellar cupboard was planned. Look how that worked out. I planned children and happily ever after. I planned to keep all my marriage vows, in life and in death. But it's not so easy to forget life when you are the one still living. It just creeps up against you like the sickly brown bird that haunts my garden.

The town has enough scandals to hide, but I'm still worried. I want to say to hell with them, all of them. They know, or should know, what it's like, and how rare it is to find this again. But that's not always how it is. Eight months of wearing black, but he stripped that from me two days after he walked up in uniform and knocked. He told me to wear red for blood if I wanted to burrow into the hole any deeper. I know there's an edge there that Ray never had. It's why nobody wants to marry Mick St John.

Lila Fordham didn't want to marry Mick St John. Mick St John wouldn't have wanted to marry Lila Fordham. But somehow we are not those people.

-x-

"This old house is falling down around my ears," I say, mock-sadly.

He's followed me to the kitchen, the remains of cake in his hands, heading for the fridge. I watch him glide, steps tracing a well-worn path in the wood as though he'd waited table for me for years.

Mick purses his lips gently and nods. "You know you just need to ask."

"I know, Mick. I know," I say and duck my head, playing for docility and modesty. "But I couldn't ask you-'

"Yeah," he interrupts. "You can. For Ray."

I can't look at him. His eyes are steady on me. I've rehearsed this before but it hasn't helped. The leaky faucet behind me chooses this moment to drip a little louder. I know that four pairs of ears in the doorway are listening discreetly as wives pack up the food. It's the same dinner I've cooked when there were only three people around my dinner table. Ham, greens, the scraps carefully caught up in boxes for storage. The war has made us all a little careful.

They're surprised I'm celebrating, but I've told them it's for all the men who _will_ come home. I say this with a straight face as the sheets I lay on with Mick dry in the backyard. I can see them from the kitchen window.

"Thank you." I watch my hand reach out to his arm and I feel the slight tremor that runs through him.

Not touching him is something I cannot do.

"I'll come round tomorrow and fix the tap. You can tell me if anything else needs fixing. OK?"

I nod and we go in together, flush with secrets, gracefully avoiding each other as if we'd come from making whoopee up against the back porch. We've set our tableau for the neighbours.

At night he wakes often and frantic. I tell him, "It's OK." And I hold him. I know his mother is lying awake down the street, waiting for his footsteps. She quietly washes the unused sheets on his bed and leaves the back door open, just as she used to when he and Ray were children. After the year is over, I know she'll ask Mick to court me properly. I know because I know she's waiting for me to find her laughing boy in this Mick. We haven't spoken of it yet. These nights, in the darkness all I repeat is, "It's OK." I'm not sure he believes me. He will. It's OK. It will be OK. It already is.

He tells me of the forests that ate them alive, then the snows that froze the Germans from the war. It is the one day in Italy that I ask about least and that I cherish most. He tells me that the last words from Ray's lips were of me. That's all he'll say. He clenches and unclenches his fists and runs a hand roughly through his hair.

I sit here at the kitchen table after he's sneaked out again and I think, 'When I was building airplanes with patriotic fervour, someone else's patriotic fervour was shelling my husband. Someone else's war killed him. Who did I kill?'

I know Mick asks himself a different question. I know it from the way his body tenses for action when a plane flies overhead. I know it from the way he slams out of the house when he's tired, only to stop dead on the front porch and slide back in. He holds me close then and whispers that he's sorry, that I should forgive him, that he can't leave even though he shouldn't be here; the street – asphalt – the curtains – the weak morning sunshine – none of it makes any sense.

He slams out when I mention Ray's name. I'm prisoner of two men. We're all prisoners of men. Fr. Maloney stresses 'fishers' too emphatically at church. I see through him. I see through them all. I see the glances at the white of my shirt and the red on my nails. I see the pursed lips when Mick knocks at my front door to drop off a bag of groceries. He says it's the least he can do – he says it loudly and often, praying that the children grubbing on the pavement will hear and insinuate it into their dinner table conversations: "I heard Mr. St John says it's the least he can do, an' can I have another potato, please?"

It will be a year of being a widow soon.

I am fractured. Fractured mind, fractured heart. I pass him on the street when he's walking and we smile and nod like neighbours. In the sunshine I can pretend that I turn back time, that when I turn the corner and walk home it will be the day before Ray leaves and he will be waiting for me. Some nights, I've taken to waiting for Mick and counting the minutes in cigarettes. He tells me the French whores did it - smoke, that is. He means Belgian but I didn't know that for a long time.

At night, we bury ourselves in a fine mist of longing.

"It's good," he tells me, smiling over the dinner plate.

I watch his lips as they curve and wait for him to finish.

"How was work?" he asks.

"Filing and answering the telephone - a real challenge." I raise my eyebrows gently, letting the giggle flow without reserve.

He's watching my hands. The tan lines on my ring finger have faded.

"It's been almost a year," Mick says, with a shadow of his former gaiety.

I want to paint these lips scarlet and brush against that leg when I walk by him. I want to strip every sweat-soaked and sticky layer from him and scatter all the alley cats to the wind. I can hear them singing among the clicking rosary beads and the spirituals.

Not even a year – _whisper whisper_ – stayed all night I think – _gossip_ – his best friend!

Yes, I took him to bed or he took me to bed, or perhaps we both flew there through the dusty air and the sounds of us loving made the floors disappear so that the bed fell faster to slide underneath us.

I can tell by the look in his eyes that he's not really with me. He's moving and it's not my name convulsing in his throat. I hold on to his arms; I can't look at his face. Nothing about them is the same, but for a second, I swear there are two men with me. I open my eyes and he's shorter, stockier, blonder with the moonlight in his hair, and I can almost feel the cool metal of a wedding band where his fingers curl against me. Mick's in my body and Ray's leaning over me soothing me with that quick and easy smile that says 'Leave everything to me, darling.' I look for the shading of Italian trees around him but there's just the thin mirror in the corner and the shadows swimming on the ceiling. Mick has brought him home.

I love him so. If this is what it takes to love him, I'll love him till the end of time. I'll love them both. I tell him, so that he never forgets.

Lovers and husbands – is it sinful that I want both? The wedding photograph is pushed back further and further. I realise I have nothing of my time with Mick, but maybe soon? He is not as restless now. He says the blankets and the sheets form a nest for him; he doesn't thrash like a restless fox in its open hole anymore.

When his body collapses in on itself, I realise it's just Mick left. I can feel him move deep inside, pelvis and legs pressing hard enough for purple bruises, and his mouth so close to my ear.

"I need you," he says quietly.

I feel the words tumble down around me like thousands of grains of rice or rose petals. He whispers them again and I feel them encircle my heart like a bright gold wedding band. I'm his.


End file.
